Greetings

The IRT Innovation Challenge—Attracting Attention from around the World

Japan’s declining birthrate and aging population is having a profound impact on society, the economy, and culture. Because the aging population is changing the very structure of society, it is one of Japan’s greatest challenges. To solve the problems created by this unprecedented situation, Japan must take action on multiple fronts such as social system reform, economic policy, technology development, and human resource development.
Two issues in particular require urgent attention and effective measures. They are raising productivity to compensate for labor shortages and improving elderly care services for the growing number of people that need support each year. The University of Tokyo is attracting a lot of attention in its efforts to solve these issues through the implementation of robot technologies. The Information and Robot Technology Research Initiative at the University of Tokyo was launched in 2007 to promote the use of robots in our aging society based on collaboration between academia and industry.
The goal of the IRT Research Initiative is to advance innovation creation to meet the challenges of our aging society. Towards that end, IRT garners the collective “knowledge” of the University of Tokyo—that is, the merging of robotics, information technology, and social science—to develop basic robot technology and through collaboration with industry to manufacture products that are useful to society and the daily lives of people.
The IRT Research Initiative recruits outstanding young researchers from Japan and overseas to conduct research and development. IRT collaborates with key members of Japan’s manufacturing industry.
IRT made several exciting press releases related to cleaning and tidying technology for home-assistant robots, mobility support technology for personal mobility robots, recall support technology for elderly people, and dish-washing technology for kitchen robots. In response to these announcements, IRT received inquiries and visits from domestic press agencies, companies, and research institutes as well as from state ministers and members of parliament of France, England, America, and Sweden.
IRT is looking forward to collaborating with overseas research institutes on standardization and safety and taking the lead in developing the world’s first robots based on global standards.